Chill-out music

Chill-out music (sometimes also chillout, chill out or simply chill) is a genre of electronic music and an umbrella term for several styles of electronic music characterized by their mellow style and mid-tempo beats, "chill" being derived from a slang word for "relax".

Chill-out music emerged in the early and mid-1990s in "chill rooms" at dance clubs, where relaxing music was played to allow dancers a chance to "chill out" from the more emphatic and fast-tempo music played on the main dance floor.

The genres associated with chill-out are mostly ambient, trip hop, nu jazz, ambient house and other subgenres of downtempo. Sometimes, the easy listening subgenre lounge is considered to belong to the chill-out collection as well. Chill-out, as a musical genre or description, is synonymous with the more recently popularized terms "smooth electronica" and "soft techno", and it is a loose genre of music blurring into several other very distinct styles of electronic and lo-fi music.

Chill Out

Chill Out is the third studio album by The KLF, and the first album under the name, released in February 1990. An ambient house concept album, it portrays a mythical night-time journey up the US Gulf Coast from Texas into Louisiana. The album is a continuous composition, in which sampled music (including Elvis Presley, Fleetwood Mac, Acker Bilk and Tuvan throat singers), vocal samples and sound effects are overlaid with original music.

Context

Composition and recording

Chill Out is a single continuous musical piece having many distinctive sections, each of which either segues into or introduces the next. The album as a whole is a progression, with percussion gradually introduced during the second half. The KLF have stated in interviews that the album was recorded in a 44-minute "live" take in their studio, Trancentral, located in the basement of The KLF member Jimmy Cauty's squat in Stockwell, South London. This was a DAT to DAT "live" edit — essentially Chill Out is a "best of" of many hours of collaborative ambient DJ jam sessions that also involved Alex Paterson of The Orb. These took place at both Trancentral and the monthly 'Land of Oz' at London's Heaven nightclub. Said Cauty, "There's no edits on it. Quite a few times we'd get near the end and make a mistake and so we'd have to go all the way back to the beginning and set it all up again". According to Cauty's co-founder of The KLF, Bill Drummond, the album took two days to put together.Record Collector compared The KLF's production method to that of established electronic musicians: "While electronic dinosaurs like Jean Michel Jarre and Klaus Schulze were walling themselves in with banks and banks of synthesizers, computers and electronic gadgetry the KLF were doing the opposite—making a crafted work like Chill Out with the bare necessities of musical survival."

The Good Life

The Good Life or Good Life may refer to:

"The good life", a philosophical term for the life that one would like to live, originally associated with Aristotle.

Ethics and environmental philosophy

Film

Literature

Music

Songs

Music

Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound and silence. The common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics (loudness and softness), and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture (which are sometimes termed the "color" of a musical sound). Different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. Music is performed with a vast range of instruments and with vocal techniques ranging from singing to rapping, and there are solely instrumental pieces, solely vocal pieces and pieces that combine singing and instruments. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses"). In its most general form, the activities describing music as an art form include the production of works of music (songs, tunes, symphonies, and so on), the criticism of music, the study of the history of music, and the aesthetic examination of music. Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as "the harmony of the spheres" and "it is music to my ears" point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound."

Form of the Good

Plato describes "The Form of the Good", or more literally "the idea of the good" (ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα), in his dialogue the Republic (508e2–3), speaking through the character of Socrates. Plato introduces several forms in his works, but identifies the Form of the Good as the superlative. This form is the one that allows a philosopher-in-training to advance to a philosopher-king. It cannot be clearly seen or explained, but once it is recognized, it is the form that allows one to realize all the other forms.

Usages in The Republic

The first references we see in The Republic to the Form of the Good can be found within the conversation between Glaucon and Socrates (454 c–d). When trying to answer such difficult questions pertaining to the definition of justice, Plato identifies that we should not “introduce every form of difference and sameness in nature” instead we must focus “on the one form of sameness and difference that was relevant to the particular ways of life themselves” which is the Form of the Good. This Form is the basis for understanding all other Forms, it is what allows us to understand everything else. Through the conversation between Socrates and Glaucon (508 a–c) Plato analogizes the Form of the Good with the sun as it is what allows us to see things. Here, Plato describes how the sun allows for sight. But he makes a very important distinction, “sun is not sight” but it is “the cause of sight itself.” As the sun is in the visible realm, the Form of Good is in the intelligible realm. It is “what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower”. It is not only the “cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge”.